I was pleasantly surprised this morning to see that Google Analytics had changed. Google has added many features to Analytics to allow improved statistics comparison by allowing multiple attributes or multiple sites to be graphed simultaneously. It is thus now easy to compare month to month statistics or to find correlations between variables; say average time on your site and page views.

Another nice addition to Analytics is the ability to export (and email) reports in PDF. Of note as well, Google seems to have eliminated one level of precision when displaying the map overlay geolocation visualization. The region information is now omitted but admittedly, I did not find it that useful to begin with.

Moving to new tracking code – urchin.js to ga.js

Google Analytics is also migrating from the current urchin.js JavaScript code to a new ga.js code. Urchin code will continue to be supported for at least a year while users migrate to the new ga code. The new tracking code is claimed to ease tracking customization such as cross-domain tracking and filtering. New features will only be added to the new ga tracking code.

Update (Dec 19): As Lisa has pointed out in the comments, I was mistaken when I claimed that Google Analytics could compare stats from multiple sites. Sorry, my mistake! It certainly would be welcome feature if Google is looking for new features to implement.

I read about this last week but I’ve yet to see where I can compare multiple sites. I can compare multiple variables within my site, but I still don’t see where the multiple site aspect kicks in. It’s still in beta so that may be why. It wouldn’t surprise me though if they start to offer more competitive information much like compete.com

Thanks Lisa. You are right I was mistaken when I said that you could compare multiple sites. Where you select the Graph Mode to compare one metric or two metrics there is an option to “Compare to Site”. I mistakenly assumed that this was to compare to another site in Analytics and not to compare the metric to your overall site itself.

It certainly would be nice to be able to compare multiple sites and get aggregate stats. I am considering splitting up my blog into multiple blogs but having to track and analyze multiple sets of stats is a problem.